I've been clinically obese myself, so I get the struggle.

I released the weight without diet"ing", counting calories or exercising & you can too!

I have been in your shoes.

I did Weight Watchers when I was 15 years old for about two weeks....yes I lost some weight....but I didn't keep doing it because who really wants to have to constantly keep score of what they eat? Instead of counting calories, I pretty much starved myself to fit into my grad dress (because that was easier than having to be mathematician just to have to formulate a meal!).

In my mid 20's, it was quite a challenge to release the excess weight after my son was born. By the time I turned 30 and gave birth to my daughter, I never did   lose all of the 'baby weight'.

6 years later at the age of 36 - in literally what felt like overnight, I woke up to the fact that I was obese.

I had felt so weighted and held back from reaching my potential that I lived up in my head and so disconnected from my body, that I didn't even notice.

I was 176 lbs and 5'4". For someone of my height, that is beyond overweight. Clinically, I was obese. 

How had I not noticed this happening to myself? It was obvious and as plain as day, but I just couldn’t see it.

A month or so earlier I had been in Las Vegas for a video marketing event thinking that video would be just the thing I needed to move the needle in my business. I remember walking past a mirror in the hotel and thinking, “Wow I am so bloated I look pregnant. This hotel food must be really poor quality”! For some reason, it didn’t even occur to me that I had gained weight.

I have to laugh about it now because it was almost as if I had the opposite experience of an anorexia. I could literally be obese and not even see myself as having a weight problem!

What’s worse is that a month or so earlier, I had been working with a client who had enrolled in a 6 month package with me to help her lose weight without dieting.

No problem, I thought this would be easy. We'll just get her off the standard north american diet and put her on a whole foods diet and the weight would just fall off on it's own (after that's what happened for me when I was in my early twenties, I thought it applied to everyone). Every Saturday morning I would head off to her house for a session and on one particular morning, I did something I never did. I stepped on her scale when I was in the bathroom. I didn’t even own one myself because I truly had no interest in the topic. At that time I didn't wear make-up, I didn't shave and I had totally turned my back against conventional beauty standards. That's when I first saw the number 176 lbs! That should have made it plain as day right? Nope. I was so unconsciously in denial that I actually thought to myself “she must have set the scale up 15 lbs to motivate herself with negative feedback”! 

Why didn't I believe the scale? I guess it was because, it was just so plain unbelievable to me that I could have gained that much weight in such a short period of time - and because growing up, my mom used to set the scale up 5 lbs to keep herself in check. So instead of realizing the truth of what had happened, I thought to myself “sheesh, she is really being ‘kooky’ setting the scale up 15 lbs!”.

And oh the irony of becoming an obese nutritionist two months into a weight loss coaching package with a new client. Honestly, I cannot believe how gracious my client was about it. She never once mentioned it or asked me what was going on. The truth is though, that I would have had no explanation for her …..because I wasn’t doing anything different from what I had always done. As for her, she reversed her diabetes diagnosis, which is amazing, but she didn't lose a lot of weight. 

The moment that I finally realized I was obese, came soon after getting back from that video marketing event where I thought I was ‘just bloated’. Being that I was at a family gathering, I  had the opportunity to step onto a scale and I saw that same number for the second time. This time I finally really saw it and I knew it was real. First I felt shock and then panic. I could literally feel the blood draining from my extremities as I went into fight or flight mode.

I wanted to run. Run from the shame and embarrassment of being seen and even more so from the fear of feeling out of control and not knowing if I could stop it from getting worse - I wasn’t yet even thinking about how I could lose it.

I walked back up the stairs and sat with my extended family at the dining room table - reeling. I could barely hear the muffled voices or communicate while my brain sat there ‘rolodexing’ my life trying to figure out what had happened. When did it happen? How did it happen?

Later that night when I got home and started scrolling Facebook, I saw that my cousin had posted a picture of us on Facebook from that night and had 'tagged' me in it. When I saw myself, I was instantly horrified and untagged myself feeling embarrassed and ashamed to be seen.

So much for video marketing.

Interesting isn’t it how sometimes when we do something to up level our lives, we can also subconsciously sabotage ourselves?

I had a sneaking suspicion that the extra weight came on just in time to keep me from doing all the scary uncomfortable stuff in my business, like getting on stage, recording videos and getting in front of the camera for a photo shoot etc.  Even though my intuition told me these things were important next steps in my business - they were also ways in which I would have to be more visible and risk being vulnerable.

My subconscious fear based parts came up with a plan to keep me from stepping into the spotlight of my own life “….hmmm” they said, “What can we do to protect Sherry from taking risks and being criticized? oh, oh” said one of them, “I know! If we make her fat, she’ll be too afraid to leave the house, never mind doing all that getting in front of an audience stuff. She’ll be way too ashamed and embarrassed to do any of that scary stuff".

And you know what? It did slow me down to a point, but it didn’t stop me entirely.

Here are some of the things that I found myself doing to hide the fact that I was fat:
1) Avoiding being seen in public. I remember being super embarrassed to be seen out in my community at events (unlike other health challenges, which are often invisible to the people around us, we can't easily hide being overweight!).
2) Angling my camera to make myself look thinner, so that my nutrition clients couldn't see how fat I was getting
3) Postponing opportunities and mentally putting my success far away into the future – for ‘someday’ when I became thin

So how could this have happened in the first place?

How did a whole foods eating hippy health nut become obese?

Not kidding you, this happened on a whole foods vegetarian diet. I hadn't eaten the standard north american diet since I had healed myself using natural medicine at the age of 20. I had been eating natural, organic and quality food for 16 years!

I had to take a really good look at what was happening in my life to figure out that I had triggered my weight gain.

I had to acknowledge that being a mom and wife in a marriage that was lacking deep emotional connection, shared values, intellectual stimulation and support to be the best version of myself, had taken it’s toll on my spirit. 

To cope, I turned to my work-a-holism where I found solace in the intellectual aspects, creativity and in the significance of serving others.

While I was working my ass off 24/7 day and night, seeing clients, teaching classes, driving my kids to school and back, making meals and lunches (from scratch), running online launches, doing laundry and all the housecleaning chores – without any help – my ex-husband would come home from work, take a nap, wake back up, get stoned and disconnect from the whole family, while hiding away in our bedroom scrolling his tablet for hours.

It Still Took Me 9 Months After that to EVEN Decide to Lose the Weight

At first I felt powerless to change things. It felt futile, because I thought I was already doing everything right. I mean I already made 3 whole food vegetarian organic meals from scratch every single day - what more could I do? 

By this time with two young children in tow, we only ate out on the rarest of occasions and periodically went through phases of ordering in a pizza on Friday nights. But since I had been eating that way for over a decade, I couldn’t figure out why now it was suddenly making me fat.

I wasn’t interested in going to the gym or working out at home. And I definitely wasn’t going to go on a diet and become an obsessive "calorie counter". In my mind, diet’s were for ‘dummies’ - they obviously aren’t healthy and statistics prove they don’t work long term - so what’s even the point? I knew for sure that going on a diet wasn’t the answer. But that still didn't mean that I had the the answers......even after completing and graduating with honours from two of Canada’s top holistic nutrition schools. 

You see, I used to think that losing weight was as easy as…. just stop eating junk food and eat real food. After all, that’s what worked for me in my 20’s.  

In my early twenties, after becoming health conscious, all I did was improve the quality of the food I ate and went on a cleanse. These two simple shifts resulted in a weight loss of 20 lbs over two years without counting calories or exercising. I had simply turned my focus away from my fat and instead focused on eating better for health purposes and the weight just dropped off on it's own. I wasn't trying to lose weight - it just dropped away as a side benefit because I had restored balance to my body (increased nutrients & eliminated toxicity).

At the time, I remember telling a good friend of mine how thankful I was to have finally figured out how easy it is to maintain one’s weight just by eating natural foods. I felt totally liberated thinking I was never going to have to worry about my weight again. I was so sure of this at 24 years of age, that I though that a whole foods vegetarian diet was the answer to every health challenge under the sun - including obesity.

Fast forward to my thirties, and I was eating even better than in my twenties (a time when I ate out a lot more than I care to admit!) and yet suddenly here I was obese. What the?! It seemed like a cruel joke. 

Why did a whole foods vegetarian diet get me to my ideal weight in my twenties without even trying to lose weight - and the same dietary model lead to obesity when I was in my mid thirties? I had no idea. Until I knew the true cause of my unexplained weight gain, it seemed futile to try to lose it. I decided I wasn’t going to expend any energy on it until I figured out what had triggered it in the first place. So I did almost nothing about it for 9 months.

In fact, I almost succumbed to the idea of staying fat

Finally I came to the realization that I was at a crossroads. One that women usually don’t come to until they are in their mid to late 40’s, but with my hereditary weakness being hormonal, and with a family history of hypothyroidism and diabetes, I had hit it early. By this point, I had not just 'plumped up', but I had lost my feminine curves, my hair and skin were drying out. I was frazzled, frumpy and feeling haggard. Can you say early peri-menopause, pre-diabetes and sluggish thyroid?!

I looked around me and saw many women in their 50’s and beyond who looked just like me. The body shape I had in my mid thirties seemed to be the norm for most women past 50, so I had the thought, “well pudgy grannies are cute, so maybe I can just accept that this is a part of aging and stop making it an issue or a problem to solve."

And then there was this other voice inside of me that was like ‘hell no’ you are not going to succumb to this. It isn’t normal or natural - if it was, every woman would look like this past 50. After all wrinkles are normal and natural and everybody actually does get them as they age…..but being overweight? That is not normal. It may be common, but it isn’t natural or healthy. If it was, then does that mean that women over 50 that are in the normal weight range are unhealthy? Come on, of course not! 

So in that moment, I finally decided that I was going to choose to be 'hot', that I would get my feminine curves back and keep them. I decided I would figure this thing out.

Come hell or high water I was going to get my body back.

I simply decided that I would figure it out and I did! 

It began with acknowledging that despite my education about and passion for nutrition, there was clearly some things that I was missing.

I had to stop believing that I was already sure that I was doing everything right - and admit that clearly based on my results, I was doing something wrong. And something needed to change.

The truth is that my vegetarian meals were no longer serving me and I needed to change my approach and eat in a way that addressed my underlying health imbalances (hormone imbalance, sluggish thyroid and insulin resistance). 

I also had to address my emotional weight too.

The truth is that I was drowning in emotional weight and my energy was being drained by an increasingly toxic marriage. I was burdened with all of the so called woman’s work and childcare – while my ex husband simultaneously let the yard work and garbage pile up around us - even though he had plenty of time, being that he had been fired from his job.

The outside of our home which was once so beautiful that it had  been published in a gardening book, had become a mess of weeds (some higher than my height) to the point that, even the neighbours got so upset that ......someone else's husband  came over to mow our lawn just to make a point! That day I remember feeling both relief and shame. Relief that it wasn't just me that felt despondent abut the condition of our yard. My discomfort about his clutter and bare minimum contribution to had alway been ignored or invalidated, so it felt good to be validated, but I also felt sheepish since I had been home quietly hiding and watching from behind the curtains.

While my ex-husband had always had hoarding tendencies (something that few people saw the extent of because I over compensated for that), he later admitted he was doing this on purpose to spite me. He was deliberately trying to sabatogue all my efforts to make a better life for our family.

To compensate financially for the fact that he wasn't working, I was running off my feet, managing an Air BnB suite, getting tenants, taught part time at a nutrition college, was tutoring students and coaching private clients all while doing all of the housework, cooking, cleaning and childcare - it was exhausting.

Everything I did was simultaneously never good enough and at the same time a threat to his ego. 

Essentially, I was in a double bind that I couldn't win.

While I had been shrinking my soul to fit my husband’s limited view of the world, my body had been growing in size to scream out its discontent.

He told me he would only go to marriage counselling if I took the kids out of their private arts school, stopped buying organic food and quit doing "what I do".

He had so much contempt for my values and my work, that he wouldn't even say the words out loud "stop being a holistic nutritionist" - it was one of many ways that he discredited and invalidated my work, while also actively sabotaging every effort I made to elevate our families well-being and our finances. It was truly incomprehensible to me. Who wants less for their children than they had? Vulnerable narcissists do.

I finally had the courage to stop fighting to save the relationship, when I realized that not only were things never going to change, but that they were just going to get worse. I could already see the writing on the wall.

And that's when I knew it was over and the line was crossed. 

No thank you. I chose not to be convinced to lower my standards in life or go off my life path, bury my talents and lay my purpose in life to waste in the name of love – because that isn't love!

It boils my blood to think of how many women are stuck in disempowering relationships, shrinking themselves to appease someone who wants them to settle and staying with partners who instead of holding an elevated vision and embodying a high work ethic for the family, want to give nothing more than the bare minimum.

A couple months before our first serious divorce conversation…..I had done a coaching exercise on myself where I came to the clear realization that I was settling because of the fear of the impact on my children and concern for not being able to take care of myself and my two children financially. I finally admitted to myself that although to my detriment, I was still in love with him at the time, I couldn’t lower my standards any longer and stay because of fear.

Despite not knowing 'the how', I had to take my life into my own hands and face my survival fears. And yes did things did get much worse before they got better - essentially all the worst things could happen in a divorce happened, but those stories are for another place and time.

I share all this to illustrate that I know what it is like to live in a toxic marriage and how settling in life affects our health, well-being and weight.

My life path hasn't been easy, but it has been full of valuable lessons that I am grateful to be able to give back, so I can pick up some rocks on your road, so that you don't have to trip up the way I did.

The truth is that ultimately I choose not to be the victim.

The writing was always on the wall. I knew that man was not "the marrying kind" and I also saw all the red flags and ignored them. Ignoring them was my choice, and at the same time I have compassion for my younger self.

Through hard won wisdom born of experience, I am here to help you stop settling and raise your standards - in all areas of your life - your health, your weight and your purpose. 

It's time to acknowledge the truth about what is holding you back, stop ignoring your feelings, stop settling, raise your standards, heal your relationships and possibly even let some go – or at the very least start making your exit plan (whether its from a toxic or low vibe marriage to a job you hate).

No matter what though – you HAVE to do something different or NOTHING is going to change!

My life is dedicated to helping you be the best you can be in all aspects of your life.

I believe that we can all live our dream lives by letting the weight go (on all levels) and becoming so empowered that we would never again shrink ourselves to make someone else feel comfortable or stay in a relationship that are going no where. 

If that sounds like exactly what you are seeking, I invite you to start your journey with me inside of a community of woman who are committed to their elevation too.

In the UN-diet School, we identify your emotional weight too, so that you too can let it go, get your energy and vitality back
and elevate your self and your life to your highest potential!

When I was a toddler in the 70's I used to walk around saying, "I am fat" because I heard my mom saying that, although I am sure that I didn't know what that meant.

Later when I was 6, I heard my aunt tell my mom that I was getting a pot belly, to which my mom said, "no she's not, don't say that".  Nevertheless, it made a big dent in me because I never forgot it. Still to this day, despite having an hourglass figure, I rarely wear anything tight around my waist..... because unless it is perfectly flat, I feel insecure about it.

My family has always been very weight conscious, as has society.

So you see, probably like you, I too was programmed to fear being overweight and have been battling issues with with how my body looks, my whole life.

My journey to understanding and overcoming issues with my weight started way back in high school.

My actual struggle with weight since I was a teenager. 

I specifically remember the moment when I realized that I gained weight in puberty - going from 115 lbs to 121 lbs - that was the first time I felt fat.

I still remember the jeans I wore and how they became tight with a roll of fat pushing out at the top.

This switch from having a 'stick figure' to a shapely one and how it affects the feelings of young girls, needs to be talked about more. 

We should really be telling them that a shift in body composition also comes with menstruation and that it doesn't mean they are getting fat, it means that they are becoming, shapely and voluptuous - and that, that is beautiful.

Over time my weight climbed up to 140 lbs and I remember being very insecure about that and being called fat by a boy in high school.

After that I became no stranger to starving myself , dieting and binging after. 

In fact, my friends and I used to have binging sleepovers. We called it ‘porking out’. 

Honestly, I am not sure what I was more excited about - hanging out with my friends or pigging out! 

I remember lamenting “wouldn’t it be amazing if junk food made you skinny and healthy food made you fat?”.  I never would have guessed that my fantasy would one day become real for me, because today I can make any sweet treat or comfort food in a way that doesn't cause weight gain. 

Back then though, I used to say that food was the devil. And I meant it, because it felt like food was ruining my life.

One of my weekend rituals - before starting yet another diet on Monday - was to buy a bacon double cheeseburger and fries at Mc Donalds, plus a chocolate bar, chips and a Mc Cain cake from 7 Eleven for dessert. All just so that I could get my 'fill' before Monday - after which I would starve myself and do aerobics (think back to the days of VHS, Susan Powter and Denise Austin!).

To top it off, I would buy at minimum 8 fashion magazines (Teen, Seventeen, YM, Sassy, Vogue, Cosmo, Glamour and Elle) and then rent a movie with a beautiful thin Hollywood actress in it to "inspire" me to be skinny - probably more like to punish myself by comparison and motivate me to start my diet.

Back then, I thought you had to exercise yourself to death and eat like a rabbit to lose weight. Of course raw carrots, celery and iceberg lettuce didn’t sound fun, sexy or glamorous at all. At the time, I didn't even think it was possible to enjoy eating food and actually maintain a healthy weight (hence food being the devil).

I remember when a few months before my grade 12 graduation, I starved myself to fit into my grad dress so that I could have  a perfectly flat stomach, even while sitting down. Yeah it worked, but I was miserable - especially after when I stopped starving myself and the weight piled back on.

I had became heavier than before I starved myself.  Experiences like this taught me well - how deficiency and deprivation always backfires.

Eventually, I refused to diet and instead embarked upon a journey to discover the truth about health and weight loss. I discovered that healthy food is actually way more delicious than any junk food - and  that when you know what you are doing in the kitchen, you can make and eat any treat to your heart's desire without getting fat.

It turns out that all of our sinfully delicious favourite foods, can be turned into angelic alternatives that provide nutrition and pleasure at the same time.

You're in the right place, if you are done with the hellish world of fad diets, starving, deprivation and slaving away at the gym - and ready for the heaven of finally being able to eat decadently without gaining weight.

It turns out that the fantasy is real. You really can eat cake and lose weight. You just need to learn how to do that.

Here's what it takes:

1. Get re-educated and discover that you don't need to diet to lose weight and learn what to do instead
2. Put the foundation in place diet, lifestyle, environment, inner work etc.
3. Address your underlying health issues with natural health protocols that include natural food, herbs, superfoods, supplements, natural healing practices and metaphysical inner work to give your body what it has been missing, all of which is slowing down your metabolism

If you need more:

1. Do a metabolic reset to remove any lingering weight loss resistance.
2. Cleanse whenever you need to and lower your weight set point.
3. Use food as medicine to blast past plateaus, for those times when your body needs a gentle nudge.
   

This is the path I walked to drop 12 dress sizes eating more luxuriously than ever and you can too. No calorie counting and no exercise.

If this path makes sense to you, I invite you to join us in the UN-diet school where I will walk you step-by-step on the journey
and show you how to customize your path along the way!

What separates me from other weight loss mentors:

1. I’ve been in your shoes – I am not one of those make it look easy fitness junkies or ‘always been skinny chicks’ who just doesn't understand why you can’t stick with counting calories or an exercise routine. I too can’t be bothered to count anything and I would much rather ‘work’ than work out! I've experienced the shame and the embarrassment too - to add fuel to the fire, as a holistic nutritionist, people expect me to be a pillar of health, not walking around wearing a health issue for all the world to see!
2. I don't use calorie counting or fitness routines to force your body to submit to your intention to lose weight, leaving you starving deprived and feeling exhausted ready to reward yourself with cake and then trigger a binging cycle where you are left back at an even higher weight, disappointed, futile, ashamed and embarrassed about being right back where you started. Instead we focus on the root causes of your weight gain and address them head on, so that you stop watching your weight and instead focus on your health, your life, self actualization and living to your full potential!
3. I am not a just someone who lost weight and is only showing you what I did, and hoping it works as well for you as it did for me. As a holistic nutritionist, I know that there is no one size fits all approach to weight loss, and that's why we dive deep into you as an individual to see what your unique body needs.
4. I have maintained my weight and the Delish Diet(a) lifestyle for almost 15 years now. I don't pretend to be perfect and I don't have a model body, but I have kept the weight off (mostly) for well over a decade (with a few ups and downs along the way, because life happens) . I've stayed the course through intense stress, like divorce, college in my late 40's and menopause. The truth is that everyone has challenges and no one is perfect. A huge part of the path of success with permanent weight loss is learning how to get back on track ASAP - despite life's inevitable ups and downs.
5. I've lost weight through both peri and menopause, so I know this through experience. I am living testament to the fact that you don't have to settle and succumb to gaining excess weight. Our adrenals take over for our ovaries to produce our sex hormones, so what we really need to be focusing on is adrenal health (makes hormones), and increasing our the nutritional building blocks of hormones (so that our adrenal have raw materials to work with), while optimizing liver health (the liver regulates our hormones). 
6. As a holistic nutritionist with 30+ years experience in the natural health field and a 3rd year student of medical herbalism, everything I teach is aligned with natural health principles - no counting calories, fad diets or starvation. I am also a very spiritually based person and include energy medicine in my practice from chakra work, to emotional release techniques and Reiki to flower essence medicine.  Everything I offer is nature based from the custom herbal blends I formulate as a herbalist, to the natural beauty rituals I support you to embody as an aesthetician.

You are in the right place if you want to be mentored by someone who's been where you are, who's done the work themselves and is still doing the work.